Inserting Dashes and Non-breaking Spaces and Hyphens

Getting Started with Apache OpenOffice 4

Chapter 3: Getting Started with Writer

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• What Is Writer?
• The Writer interface
• Changing Document Views
• Moving Quickly through a Document
• Working with documents
• Working with text
  • Selecting Items That Are Not Consecutive
  • Selecting a Vertical Block of Text
  • Cutting, Copying, and Pasting Text
  • Finding and Replacing Text and Formatting
  • Inserting Special Characters
  • Inserting Dashes and Non-breaking Spaces and Hyphens
  • Setting Tab Stops and Indents
  • Changing the Default Tab stop Interval
  • Checking Spelling and Grammar
  • Using Built-in Language tools
  • Using AutoCorrect
  • Using Word Completion
  • Using AutoText
• Formatting Text
  • Formatting Paragraphs
  • Formatting Characters
  • Auto-formatting
  • Creating Numbered or Bulleted Lists
  • Hyphenating Words
• Formatting Pages
  • Which Layout Method to Choose?
  • Creating Headers and Footers
  • Numbering Pages
  • Changing Page Margins
• Adding Comments and Graphics to a Document
• Creating a Table of Contents
• Creating Indexes and Bibliographies
• Adding Images and Other Graphics
• Adding Tables, Spreadsheets, and Charts
  • Creating a Table from a Calc Spreadsheet
  • Creating a Chart
• Adding a Movie or Sound
• Printing
• Using Mail Merge
• Tracking Changes to a Document
• Using Fields
• Linking to another part of a document
  • Using Hyperlinks
  • Using Cross-References
  • Using Bookmarks
• Using Master Documents
• Creating Fill-in Forms

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Inserting Dashes and Non-breaking Spaces and Hyphens

To prevent two words from being separated at the end of a line, press  Ctrl  +  ⇧ Shift  +  space bar  after the first word to insert a non-breaking space.

In cases where you do not want the hyphen to appear at the end of a line, for example in a number such as 123–4567, you can press  Ctrl  +  ⇧ Shift  +  -  to insert a non-breaking hyphen.

To enter en and em dashes, you can use the Replace dashes option on the Options tab under Tools → AutoCorrect Options. This option replaces two hyphens, under certain conditions, with the corresponding dash.

– is an en-dash; that is, a dash the width of the letter “n” in the font you are using. Type at least one character, a space, one or two hyphens, another space, and at least one more letter, then a space. The one or two hyphens will be replaced by an en-dash.

— is an em-dash; that is, a dash the width of the letter “m” in the font you are using. Type at least one character, two hyphens, and at least one more character, then a space. The two hyphens will be replaced by an em-dash.

The key difference is that an en-dash is written with spaces around it and an em-dash is not. See the Help for more details. For other methods of inserting dashes, see the Writer Guide.